


Not a goodbye - 2 - To the South (and back)

by diesis



Series: Not a goodbye [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon divergent post season 7, Post Season 7, Season 8 in my headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diesis/pseuds/diesis
Summary: They said goodbye to each other more than once, and every time they thought they weren't going to meet anymore. But they did, and now their fate brings them together again.-----Show based, canon divergent after season 7.This fic is the second part of the series. I advise you to read the first part if you want to know what's going on ;-)
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Not a goodbye [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1329585
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue - Aidan, now

**Author's Note:**

> Rating and archive warnings may change in the next chapters, and tags will be added.

Impressive. Aidan has been searching for the adjective since he first saw her in the courtyard of Winterfell, some days ago. The lady is impressive, that is the very word he was thinking about.   
She dismounts from her mare when they stop to make camp for the night, her long blond braid is streaked with white and shines golden in the twilight, and her pale skin is red from both the setting sun and the exertion. Aidan keeps on looking at her.   
Broad and muscular as she is, if she'd travelled alone, she wouldn't have needed to be protected at all, but the Lord Commander insisted that the northern branch of the Kingsroad is not safe enough for a woman and two children and Lord Stark, and so here they are. Aidan and the other Brothers are quite happy to be assigned to their escort, anyway, because a trip to Winterfell is ten times better than being sent North of the Wall. Well, maybe ten thousand times better.

Aidan has already seen some lady knights: Lady Mormont from Bear Island comes quite often in Black Town, and once he met the younger Lady Stark as well, but they are not at all like this one.  
She is tall, maybe taller than the Lord Commander himself, and of course seems more and more tall when she moves close to Lord Tyrion Stark to discuss the setting of the camp.   
Ugly, that must be said, and the battle scares don't make it better. Yet has very nice eyes, and a fierceness, a steadiness, that is very close to what might be called grace. _If she weren't a woman, that would be the shape of the Warrior himself_ , Aidan thinks. Maybe it's because of all the things he's heard about the Lady of Tarth: skilled commander during the Long Night, heroine of the battles of Winterfell and Kingslanding, some say she saved the young prince's life during the latter. And then she was elected Warden of the East by the Kingdoms Council, she fought and negotiated at the king's side during the last insurrection in Dorne, and it is known that every girl who wants to become a knight will always be welcome in Evenfall Hall.

Aidan is a bit worried, anyway: he considers if Lord Storm might care about the lady's looks. Old and scarred and maimed as he is, he clearly must have been a handsome man in his prime, and even now more than a woman in Black Town has tried to get into his bed - but unsuccessfully, as long as Aidan knows, and he knows how the Commander's eyes sparkle every time someone speaks about the Lady of Tarth, instead. So maybe he really won't care too much if she's not a beauty, in the end.

The lady turns to him, frowning: damn, he said the word aloud.  
"What's impressive, lad?"  
"Eh... uhm... I'm sorry, ser..." Aidan corrects himself immediately "My lady... I was thinking..."  
He bows his head, expects to be scolded, but she opens her cracked lips in a smile, a wide, sad smile, that puzzles him much more than any kind of reprimand.  
"What's your name, lad?"  
"Aidan, Aidan Snow, my lady. They call me Red, anyway..."  
"Is it for the hair or for the face?" She jokes, and he realises he is blushing from toes to hairline - he thinks he's going to become as red as embers at that point, embodying what his Brothers from the Free Folk say when they call him _"kissed by fire"_.  
"You remind me of a boy I knew a long time ago, Aidan." She states, looking at him with the same gaze she had for her girls as she laid them down in the back of the cart when they fell asleep.  
_The Warrior, or maybe the Mother_. "So, what was impressive?"  
"Come on, lad, I guarantee that Lady Brienne is not going to eat you alive!" Adds Lord Stark, quite amused.  
The boy collects all his strength and his nerve. "I wondered if everyone in Tarth is as tall as you, my lady... I mean... our Lord Commander is very tall as well, and the two you are the only ones I know from your island... your little ladies are quite tall for their age, too... That's impressive, my lady." He ends faintly, his courage collapsing like the snow that melts and falls from pine branches at the beginning of spring.  
"Well, no. Not everyone. Some said my father was a descendant of Duncan the Tall, but that's all." She answers, politely.  
"Have you ever met the Lord Commander, when you were on Tarth, my lady?" The question comes out before Aidan can stop it, and he can only bite his tongue, after. _The damn cheeky curious I am_ , he thinks, _Lord Storm will very likely send me on a three months patrol for this. With those two assholes, probably_ , he resolves, watching the couple of Brothers that look at him sneering, waiting for the Lady to make him toe the line.

Yet, again, she smiles, the same strange, longing grin that smoothes her homely features and makes her eyes shine. She's as sweet as she seems in her letters, in this moment.  
"Arthur Storm... no, we never met when I was on Tarth. Storm is the given name for the men of my land, like Snow here in the North." She explains. She doesn't say the word _"bastard"_. There's no more use for it, after all, after the Long Night. _"We are the king's relatives."_ His friend Karl Snow jests sometimes. North of the Neck, everybody still calls him King Jon.  
The lady's daughters, anyway, are Tarth, not Storm, even though the girls have no father.  
She goes on. "I've been on the mainland for a long time, anyway, and when I went back he was already at the Wall."   
"Why do you ask?" Lord Tyrion seems interested, and Aidan curses himself, _couldn't I just shut up sometimes instead of starting an useless chat with one of the smartest men in all Westeros and a giantess with a Valyrian steel blade at her waist?_   
"I thought he might know you, my lady, because he speaks a lot of you and of the island..." ( _I think he's fallen head over heels for you, you've read his letters as well as I did_ , Aidan doesn't tell it, he may be curious but he's not that crazy).  
"Does he?" Tyrion smirks.  
"Uhm... yes... he... well... he complains a lot about the cold. He often talks about the shores of Tarth, how warm they were..."   
"Uh!" Tyrion smirks again, whereas the Lady of Tarth turns suddenly from him and takes a long glance toward the comrades that are building a couple of tents.  
"He recalls Evenfall Hall and he is always... uhm... glad? when ravens come from the Stormlands. He seems very concerned about his homeland and proud that Tarth has a ruler as valiant as you, my lady... you are preceded by your own fame, I'd say. As his attendant, I write all his messages, you know..." He makes clear, and shows his right hand. Everybody in Westeros knows that the Lord Commander of the Watch lost his own fighting against Euron Greyjoy's fleet during the War. The stump is right under the elbow, and beneath his black cloak he wears a wooden forearm ending with a hook. 

What most people don't know are the words that fill the Commander's letters to the Lady of Tarth. When Aidan became Lord Storm's attendant, one year ago, they had already been writing to each other for years, so at first the boy almost felt as if he had arrived too late at a mummers play, whenever he was ordered either to read the parchments from Evenfall Hall - the Lord Commander claims to be long-sighted, but Aidan suspects he's not so good at reading - or to write back.  
Then, slowly, he began to understand (well, maybe a couple of times he's opened the drawer in the Commander's solar where he keeps all the lady's letters, and read some of them - fine: almost all of them - but the spring evenings are cold and dull and uneventful, and Aidan enjoys reading very much). Their correspondence is usually polite and formal in the first part of the letter, they tell each other what's going on in their respective keeps, the lady writes about her daughters, he dictates some small event of Black Town, then the tone becomes more familiar. They talk about joys, worries, feelings and hopes, and sometimes there are words that Aidan doesn't fully understand, probably it's some common saying from Tarth, but they use the quote to convey something else, something they share as if they were old friends. Actually, even though they never met, they _are_ good friends. Lord Storm has a Second-In-Command, some officers, a lot of young Brothers to look after, but few good friends, and none of them lives in Black Town: there's Ser Tollet in Eastwatch, and he's very close to Lord Stark - but Winterfell is a couple of weeks ride from the Wall, and the dwarf doesn't come to visit too often. Therefore, Aidan understands his loneliness. He surely misses his homeland, and that's why he started to write to the Lady, almost ten years ago.   
Aidan doesn't know what the Lord Commander wrote at the beginning, but the very first letter he received from the Evenstar was terse and almost rude - she didn't exactly wrote him to mind his own business, but not far off.  
Then, they somehow seemed to call a truce. Then to grow on each other. By the time Aidan started writing down Lord Storm's words, their bond was as plain as day at the boy's eyes. Old friends, more than just friends, who long for each other from afar, because the Lady can't relinquish her duties on Tarth, and the Lord Commander is confined to the Wall, and couldn't move from there if he tried.  
But Aidan knows better than to point it out. He sighs, finds something else to say.

"Anyway, my Lord, I guess it must not be easy for a southerner, to be stuck in... this..." Aidan gestures towards the frozen plain that stretches all around. "You know, here it keeps on snowing even now, and it's almost summer. Not to mention the other side of the Wall. But, actually, it's a good thing, for all of us, to have such a Lord Commander. He's a great man, an honourable one. And he wouldn't live this side of the Wall. So it's a good thing, that he's alive. Well, _somehow_ , alive."  
"It is." She states, pensive. Then she looks North, as if she might already see the Wall from the distance.  
"Mother!" It's not-so-little Joan's voice. "Have we arrived at the Wall?"  
The Lady sighs before answering. "Not yet, Jo dear."  
Aidan recalls something she wrote about her daughter's impatience. It's the fourth time Joan asks the same question today. Yesterday he counted up to nine.

\-----

The twins are quite different, both in their appearance and in their character, as Aidan learned in the last week. Joan, the green-eyed one, is skittish and talkative and self-confident, and it takes all her mother's patience to keep her in line; she's not going to be a great beauty, even if not as homely as the Lady of Tarth, but undoubtedly she'll make up in temper what she lacks in looks. Myra has inherited the sparkling blue eyes, she's a bit prettier, gentler and more ladylike, but equally ostinate. Since he's the youngest one in the party - one of the youngest Brothers in Castle Black, in fact -, and the closest in age, he's spent a lot of time with them during this trip, telling them tales of the North, the Wall, of knights and magic, earning elated glares from Myra and endless questions from Joan.

When the camp is set, the girls seek him and they wait together by the fire, while the adults cook the evening meal.   
"So which story do you want to hear, tonight, ladies? The haunted castle at the Twins? The end of the tale of the Crannog Lady-Warg? Or the mighty..." Aidan stops just on time, because he realises that they are too young to listen to the deeds of the proud Free Folk leader that used to love bears. Well, maybe _he_ is a bit young too, the elderly Brothers say that they won't allow him to the brothel until he's five-and-ten, that will be in three years, but this doesn't mean that he never heard their stories. This doesn't mean he'll tell them to two highborn young ladies of ten, either.  
"The Lady-Warg! She was so brave!" Joan shouts, excited.  
"Yes! My almost-namesake!" Myra beams. When Aidan told her that the first name of Lady Reed sounds almost exactly like her own, a couple of days ago, the Crannog has immediately become the girl's personal hero.  
"She married the Three Eyed Raven?" She asks.  
"No, but she got married anyway. First things first. Where did we stop last time?"  
"The big battle in Old Landing had just ended." The twins answer in unison.

"Oh, fine. Well, the battle had just ended, and the Night King had been defeated by King Jon's blade. The Three Eyed Raven, who'd seen that his prayers and his magical help had worked, knew that his task was fulfilled. He sat by the Heart Tree of King's Landing..."  
"What's a Heart Tree?"  
"It's a a Weirwood Tree My, that's how the northerners call them." Joan explains.  
"Exactly, Lady Joan. He sat there and promised Lady Meera that he was going to reward her because she took care of him and helped him, and he said he would have granted her three wishes. The lady thought about it for a while and then stated that the only thing she needed was to be able to protect her people, now that the battle was over and they were going back to Greywater Watch. The Raven said _This could be done_ , and asked her to think about something she wished for herself, too. _I wish I could see again my lover, but that is impossible_ , the lady said, _and I would like that you remained with me, but that is impossible as well, since the Old Gods require you._  
The Three Eyed Raven took Lady Meera's hand. _Close your eyes_ , he said. His hand became a branch around her wrist, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw the city from above: the collapsed keep, the bay, the ruins of the walls, the dead dragons on the ground, her own body standing by the tree under its red foliage. She turned her head and saw black feathers flapping in the air.   
This was the Raven's gift: as a warg, she was going to be able to guard her homeland from above and to detect any danger. And wargs and greenseers can see the dead in their dreams. Furthermore, this way her friend the Raven was going to remain with her, somehow."  
"Oooohhh!" Joan exhales.  
"Yes... unfortunately, since no gift from the Gods comes without a price, she lost her normal sight." He concludes. The truth is that the poor woman simply got blind after a huge blast during the battle, but Aidan has a soft spot for magic, and the story sounds much better this way.

"What about the marriage?" Myra asks.  
"Ah, well. Since she was blind, now, it took her a while to learn again how to do everything. And most Crannogmen were helping to build New Landing. But after two years, they all finally got back to the North, settled again in the Neck and reconstructed their city. And then one day a knight showed up in the meadowlands."  
"Who was he? Her lost lover?"  
"No, another man. His name was Ser Phil of the Godswood, because he got knighted there by the Dragon Queen after the battle of Winterfell, since he had fought bravely and killed thousands of wights with his bow."  
Maybe the number of wights is exaggerated but this at least is true.  
"He had no land and no family to go back to, after the War, so he'd left the Crownlands and was trying his luck in the North. He had seen the Lady fighting during the War and remembered her courage and her beauty. He asked her if he could be of any help in Greywater Watch.   
I forgot to tell you, there was an old witch who assisted the Lady because of her blindness, but the crone had suddenly disappeared the day before Ser Phil's arrival. So Lady Meera told him: _You can be my eyes, Ser._  
This way, they spent a lot of time together, and finally they fell in love and got married."  
"And lived happily ever after." Myra declares.  
"I don't know about the ever after, but they have three children and when I saw them in Winterfell last year they seemed quite happy, that's it."  
And this is true as well.

\-----

After dinner, they ask permission to their Lady Mother to remain awake.  
"Fine, but you have to go to sleep in our tent within half an hour." The Lady of Tarth consents, then she speaks to the boy. "Aidan, would you please see to it? I have something to discuss with Lord Tyrion."  
Someone sniggers, and both Aidan and the Lady turn and glare at Ben and Dan, who at least have the decency to pretend to feel ashamed.   
"Let it go, lad." She whispers. "I would never ask _them_ to watch over my daughters."  
Aidan swells up, and suddenly he feels some inches taller. The Lady's words remind him of the ones Lord Storm spoke on the day he was chosen as his attendant: _"Every assignment, even the smallest and humblest one, is meant to teach you something, to let you prove yourself. Whenever I give you an order or I send you on a quest, it means I trust you and I believe you can do what I asked."_  
The boy straightens his shoulders and nods.

When he sits again beside the girls, they're in the middle of a quarrel.  
"It's just because you suck at fencing!" Joan yells.  
"I _don't_ suck at fencing! And you shouldn't say bad words."  
"You are worse than me, anyway! And you did say bad words too!!!"  
Myra pouts, Joan sticks out her tongue.  
"Well, if you stop being so annoying, I might teach you that swirly move..."  
Myra seems interested and pondering. "If _you_ stop being so annoying I might help you to braid your hair the next time we have a ball in Evenfall, so you don't end up crying in a corner if that Eileen brat makes fun of you..."  
"I should have punched her."  
"Joan! You can't punch everyone. She's the daughter of one of Mother's bannermen..."  
"I should have punched her anyway..." Joan ends the last words with a yawn, Aidan can't figure if she's trying to hide her embarrassment, or it's because she kept fretting around the whole day and now she's finally tired.  
"Deal." She yawns again, outstretching her hand to her sister.  
"Deal!" Myra giggles, shaking her hand. Joan smiles in return.  
"I... are we going to sleep, My?"  
"I'm not tired! Are you tired Aidan?"  
"I'll take you to the tent, my ladies. We all can remain there until you both feel like sleeping."

Later, while Joan snores under a thick blanket on her cot, Myra sits on her own and weaves a garland with some twigs.   
She's strangely quiet, and Aidan has got to know her enough to understand it's not just tiredness.  
"Aidan" She speaks, eventually.  
"Yes, lady Myra?" He answers, without moving from his spot by the entrance of the tent.  
"How is it, to have brothers?"  
"Well, I don't have brothers. Not... ugh, it's... we don't have the same parents, not like you and Lady Joan. Well, the Lord Commander is a sort of a father, but he's not our real father. I never met my real father. I don't know who he was."  
"I know who my father was but I never met him all the same."  
"Oh." It takes some moments to Aidan to process the girl's words, and he doesn't notice that she shifted on the cot and now is gesturing to him to come closer and sit at her side.  
"Come on, I almost can hear your thoughts: they're buzzing like crazy bees." She whispers when he finally looks at her.  
Reluctantly (not so reluctantly, to be honest), he does as she bids.  
Myra wraps herself in the blanket and speaks in a hushed voice. "It's a secret, you know. Swear me you won't tell a living soul."  
"I swear." He says solemnly.  
"Lord Tyrion is my uncle, and my father was Ser Jaime..."  
"...The Golden Hand!" Aidan flinches, and all the bees in his head fly deftly to their hexagonal cells. "This explains..."   
"I guess that it just explains my family name." She says, a bit annoyed.  
"Some say he was a great hero." Aidan ventures.  
"Some say he was a kingslayer, an oathbreaker and..." Myra stops. Aidan knows exactly what's the third slur some say about him. He's read at least five books about the War, he's heard songs and poems, and the strangest thing about the long gone warrior is that people either praise his virtues or despise him so much that at first he didn't even realise they were all talking about the same man. None of the books mentioned he'd been the lover of the Lady of Tarth. Some songs said he had a beautiful and lovely knight-wife who fought with him but, well, who didn't fight, back then? Even Lady Sansa Stark had a sword in her hand (even if Aidan is pretty sure that the Warden of the North will be remembered for the rebuilding rather than for the War). One way or the other, now he's well aware he's talking to the heir of a legend. _Two legends. Impressive, indeed._  
"Bbbzzzzz." Myra jokes, when his silence gets too thick, and his musings too long. Aidan rouses himself: the daughter of such parents is still a girl of ten with beautiful eyes who dreams to become a princess.  
"He married your mother, though?"  
"Aye, he did." Myra gives him an offended glare. "Mother loved him a lot, and I'm sure he loved her, too. She's never wanted anyone else, but..." The girl bites her lower lip, then tugs at Aidan's black cloak.  
"Oh."  
Myra smiles. "Yes, oh." She repeats. "Mother wouldn't travel all the way up to the Wall just for anyone. And she's been waiting to do this trip for, like, years."  
"Why didn't she come earlier, then?"  
"Actually, I don't know. Well, we'll figure it out!" She says, the resolve in her voice softened by a half-yawn.   
From the speed of his own heartbeat, Aidan realises she said _"we"_ instead of _"I"_ , but Myra just rubs her eyes, unaware.  
"Are you tired, my lady?" He asks.  
"How is he, in truth, the Lord Commander?" She asks back, while she stretches on the cot.  
Aidan stands up. "You need not to worry, Lady Myra. He's the best man I've ever met. And he... I think he's very fond of your Lady Mother."  
"I know he is, I read his letters."  
"So did I."  
"Do you think they're going to marry?" Myra asks, in a sleepy voice.  
To this, Aidan can't answer. The Brothers of the Watch are no more bonded for life, they can go back to their homes and build their own family, but the Lord Commander would not be able to move South of the Wall - as far as they all know, the spell works up to some hundreds of yards from it, and that's why after the War the new town was built around Castle Black.  
Aidan regrets to shatter the little lady's hope, so he chooses the easiest way. "I don't know." He says.  
"If they marry, then you will be my brother?" Aidan blushes, and hopes that the girl is drowsy enough not to notice. He settles the blanket over her shoulders. "I don't want you to be my brother." She adds before falling asleep, sending another rush of blood all over his face. _Girls_ , he tells to himself with a nonchalant shrug, and feels goosebumps on his arms while he tucks them under his cloak, because nights are still chilly in this season, here up North.


	2. Brienne 1 - twelve years before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ("He married your mother, though?"  
> "Aye, he did.")

They walked in silence.   
The tent was a few yards from the bonfire, but it felt as far as the Essosi coast, and equally foreign: Brienne left the Maid of Tarth on one side of the sea, and on the other side she was going to meet the woman who had just married Ser Jaime Lannister. 

\-----

They had agreed to wait until they reached White Harbour to break the news of their betrothal - the word sounded so weird to her own ears that she was almost afraid of saying it, like a spell that could sear her tongue if she dared to pronounce it. 

After they reunited with the ones who'd escaped through the crypts, Jaime had given his seat on horseback to a plump old woman who couldn't walk fast enough, so they didn't ride together anymore.  
He didn't sleep at her side either, when they all crammed in the common tents at night, they barely touched, barely spoke. If not for some sideways looks, for the lingering of his hand on hers as he and Podrick helped her to get on the horse in the morning, she would almost have thought he might be reconsidering his proposal, and tell her he'd let himself get carried away.  
But Brienne knew him enough to be certain that he hadn't changed his mind.

That was why she had looked for Ser Addam Marbrand one evening.  
"Ser Jaime said you received a letter from my father on his behalf, and that I should ask you about its content..."   
The man lowered his gaze, and scratched his hair behind the ear. "I suppose he told you I lost the parchment during the battle."   
Brienne nodded. "Aye, he did. But I just need to know what my father wrote."   
"Maybe you should ask what Jaime wrote, first." He said, smiling.  
"He warned my father about the threat of the Greyjoy fleet..."  
"Well, he did. But then he added also that he knew you. That he'd never met a truer knight, that Lord Selwyn should be proud of you, and that any man should consider himself lucky to have you at his side, both on the battlefield and in his home."  
Brienne looked at him in disbelief, and this just made his smile widen.   
"Yes, it was absolutely as corny as it sounds." He chortled. "And he made me write that any man who saw you fighting would want to ask for your father's blessing to become your husband, if you deemed him worthy."  
"Nonsense." She commented, defensively.  
Ser Marbrand studied her intently for a brief moment, as if she were a war map on which he had to arrange some troops, then shook his head. "I wouldn't say so. Anyway. Your father's raven came when Jaime had already left. He thanked him for the information. About you, he simply stated he would be surprised if you found yourself a husband because of your skill on the battlefield, instead than as the heiress of Tarth."  
"It's not exactly a blessing." Brienne argued, suddenly feeling a lump in her throat. Selwyn hadn't answered to _her_ last letter, but she had assumed that they had left Evenfall Hall to go somewhere safer.  
"It's not exactly a prohibition, either. If he weren't your father, I'd say that he was challenging you. Or Jaime, I don't know."   
If he weren't her father, he wouldn't know that was the only way to convince her to do something: provoking her, saying it was a target she couldn't achieve.   
_Almost_ the only way, she thought, recalling Jaime's sharp grin and the taste of his kisses. He hadn't kissed her for five, agonisingly long days.  
She thanked Ser Marbrand and limped slowly to the big campfire where Sansa was entertaining the children with her stories.

Jaime followed her after a while.   
"The northerners say we should reach the Harbour in about a dozen days, maybe more at this speed." He whispered, not looking at her. "I don't know if I can keep my mouth shut for so long. In truth, I'd like to keep my mouth occupied in other ways."   
Brienne felt the blush spreading across her face, but hoped that the firelight might conceal it. "Let's tell it to the Starks and to your brother, then..."   
"You're right." He conceded. "We'll still have to wait a fortnight for the ceremony and to have a room on our own, but at least I could kiss you whenever I want."

Later, when he interrupted Sansa's tale, she understood immediately what he meant to do, and didn't bother to stop him.

\-----

"It's not a sept, but it would do, don't you think?" Jaime told her _after_ asking Sansa to officiate their wedding - and the presumptuousness was so frank, so _his_ , that it felt moving instead of infuriating.  
So they stood together by the roots of the Weirwood tree. They said their vows front of gods they'd never worshipped, they switched their worn-out and bloodstained fur cloaks, and their kiss sent sparks down her spine and deep in her bones. 

Brienne had been taught for years about how her wedding should have been: the lessons always implied feigned festivities, bridal gowns (as ill-fitting as every gown she'd ever donned), a husband that married her land and her dowry rather than herself, a bedding ceremony meant only to embarrass her further.   
She didn't feel embarrassed now, she didn't feel offended or diminished by the way Jaime claimed her, because he claimed her as an equal. She didn't feel uncomfortable in her clothes, because the bandages on her battle scars were a wedding dress that suited a soldier. 

"I am yours and you are mine." He grinned in her ear after he kissed her, and she had said the same.   
Her heart had already been his for a long, long time, and now it beat unevenly with joy. It was selfish and undeserved and still, as Pod had told her once, it wasn't wrong.   
Even the jolt of sudden fear that filled her veins, when Sansa offered them her small tent, felt _right_ : fear had never kept her from fighting, and all the more so, now that Jaime was at her side.

\-----

They walked in silence, Brienne knew all the camp was looking at them and she didn't care. Jaime put his arm around her waist, tucked his hand under her elbow and sustained her.

The tent was very small indeed - they both could barely stand in the middle - but its size helped to keep the warmth of the brazier that had been placed inside. A bonfire was sparkling out of the entrance, and they had built also some bigger tents all around it.   
The soldiers had arranged some blankets and a fur over a straw mattress and some chopped logs to sit. On a small table they'd put a basin with melted snow, a wineskin, a couple of copper cups, and some clean bandage clothes. Brienne frowned and wondered if Sansa was going to feel discouraged in such a meager accommodation, after all she'd lost, then remembered that the girl was much more unspoiled than anyone could expect from a highborn lady. As for herself, this was far better than most nights on her journeys.

Jaime helped her to sit on a log; she grimaced.  
"How is your leg?" He asked, while she removed the cloak and unbuckled the swordbelt.  
"I've been worse." She answered. He was tinkering with the items on the table, and didn't look at her while she slowly unlaced her leather jerkin.   
For a moment, it almost felt as if they had gone back to the friendly confidence of the weeks they'd spent side by side in Winterfell, the enormity of their just occurred wedding a matter with which neither of them knew exactly how to deal.

Jaime angled slightly his head over his shoulder.  
"Doesn't seem so." He said wearily, starting to remove his own garments.  
"I had more pain when I beat the Hound..."  
"What?!?" Jaime shouted in shock, turning completely to face her. She recalled that she never told him about that.  
"We almost killed each other... it was shortly after I left King's Landing... But..."  
"Clegane is a dead man!" He threatened.  
"Well, if you're going to chase every man who tried to kill me in the past, he would likely not be the first one you should go after..." She retorted, tersely.   
"That's a good point, _wife_." He chuckled, averting his gaze. Something changed in his mood as he said it aloud. 

Brienne at first thought he hadn't fully realised what they did, until that moment. But then he leant over and cupped her chin with his hand to watch her wounded cheek, and his eyes were dark in the dim light.   
"This one is bad looking and will leave quite a scar, but it's shallow." he said in a hushed voice. "Let me check your calf."  
Brienne rolled her eyes.   
"What's up? Kerion isn't the only one who's seen enough battlefields to earn a couple of rings on his chain." He smirked and nodded at her legs. "And I've seen all of you before. More than once."   
She blushed.   
"Let me, Brienne." He asked, and the pleading made her tremble.   
She nodded, then took off her breeches and scrambled to the makeshift mattress, while Jaime heated some wine in a cup. He kneeled beside her, washed her injured leg carefully, his touch warm and feather-like beneath the freezing water, then used the boiled wine on the stitched wound and gave her a clean gauze to bandage it again.   
"We should sleep, tomorrow's going to be a another hard day." He said while she closed the dressing. His voice was low. His gaze focused on her leg and his hand followed, caressing it from ankle to knee on the unharmed part. 

Brienne shivered, not from the cold. This was not fear, she realised, she was not afraid. She wanted this. She wanted him, all of him. She'd never wanted anything more than how much she wanted this.   
"Jaime..." She said, and then trailed off, because she couldn't find the words anymore. This man was more than his name, more than his handsome face and his stunning body, more than his sins, more than every word she could think about.  
Brienne grabbed the arm with the golden hand that rested on his lap. She rolled up his sleeve and removed the straps that secured it, placed the artifact on the ground, close to their swords. "We really should." She repeated flimsily, not looking him in the eye, resting her hand on the scars of his stump. 

Words can be reneged on, oaths can be broken, pacts and weddings can be annulled with a quill stroke.   
But a severed hand doesn't grow back. A touch can't be untouched. A kiss can't be unkissed.  
There was no coming back. She leaned towards him and he met her halfway, his lips crushing on hers with the hunger of a starving man. 

\-----

They emerged from the kiss as from a high cliff dive: out of breath and far more unclothed than before the jump.

Jaime used both his hand and his stump to caress her neck, then her breasts, shoving aside completely her open shirt, then fumbled with the laces of his breeches and Brienne helped him, forcing her hands not to shake, until he stood in front of her, bruised and scarred and perfect and gloriously naked.

 _All women are the same in the dark_ , said her comrades in arms back in the Tarly camp, but the small pavilion was far from blackness: a warm red light spread from the fires on the outside and passed through the thick fabric. And Jaime watched her in a way that didn't make her feel any prettier but was full of lust and of something else that she couldn't - didn't dare to - name.   
"Look at me." He begged when he knelt again, and settled himself atop of her - and she loved the taste of his tongue, the scent of his sweat, his weight, his skin under her fingers, the way his breath hastened in his arousal.  
"Brienne, look at me." He said, and she let him look at her.

 _It's going to be painful and horrible_ , a voice from childhood echoed in her ears. Brienne tried to silence it for a while, then she simply decided that she didn't mind. Her whole body was an aching mess, her cheek seared, her calf throbbed and hurt with every movement, but it didn't stop the pleasure that grew like a burning wave, igniting her flesh and melting her bones like the dragonfire on the towers of Harrenhal. It wasn't fever, this time.   
She almost didn't sense the small tearing when Jaime started thrusting in her - another scar, the smallest, the most beloved one. He did sense it, instead, he stiffened and inhaled as if he was about to ask her some question, so she shut him up with a kiss.  
"Do you mean to stop, Jaime?" She moaned teasingly on his mouth. He shook his head, speechless for once, fright or awe, or both, in his eyes. "Good. Go ahead, then."   
So he did.   
He pushed again, slowly, his lips parted, almost holding his breath, until he was inside her body in the same way he had been inside her soul for so long: deeply, completely.   
He moved faster, then, faster, the heat inside her core became almost overwhelming and she forgot every word but _Jaime_ , and _yes_ , and _yours_ (and _mine_ ).  
And what a bliss, how gorgeous he was when he came, shortly after, his head bent backward, muscles and sinews tense and then shuddering, thrashing in her arms, crying her name. 

_I'm strong enough_ , he had said, but he seemed so fragile, so bewildered when he came back from whatever height or depth he got lost into, that she felt this was somehow a first time for him as well as for her.   
She held his emerald gaze when he felt the urge to flee, as he had had to do almost always, in another bed.  
"Stay." She said. He swallowed, then leaned on her, claimed her lips again.   
"I'm not going anywhere." He whispered.   
"Nor am I." She answered.   
They lay in a tight embrace, feeling each other heartbeat becoming less frantic, for what felt - and perhaps was - a lifetime.

\-----

"Did I... did it hurt?" He asked hesitantly, afterwards.   
"I'm fine. More than fine."   
"But you didn't..." She shook her head, cutting him before he could end the sentence. He sighed. "Damn. What's the use of being old if I just rush like a green squire on my wedding night..."   
Brienne chuckled.  
"You're not old! It was... so much better than how it's supposed to be..."  
Jaime raised a questioning eyebrow, and it was her turn to sigh.  
"My septa always said that I had to pretend to like it but... Well, I _did_ like it..."   
She blushed some more, he laughed, a light-hearted laugh that suited him so good.   
"Gods, your septa was a frigid slut, wasn't she? I guess I'll have to teach you a couple of things myself, my lady wife." "Now?" "Later. Believe it or not, I am old... But we still've got time." He whispered, placing small pecks on her brow, her cheekbones, her eyelids. She prayed they really could have it.

 _You'd like to know how it feels to be a woman_ , he had said, but she already knew that: she knew the scorn of men, how they never gave her recognition as a warrior just because of her sex, she knew the mistrust of other women, she knew her body, the soreness of moon blood and battle wounds, and the darkness of her room where she searched on her own for a pleasure she was ashamed to need (his touch, his kisses were different from those she had imagined so many times, softer and rougher at one time).  
She did know how it felt to be a woman.   
How it felt to be loved, that was what she didn't know, and he was teaching her anew.


	3. Jaime 1 - in her arms

Sleep escaped him like a sneaky, coward opponent. Jaime knew he should have been resting for hours, calm and sated, with Brienne's body draped over his own, and perhaps that was the main reason he couldn't close his eyes yet: he felt he could never have enough of her. Though his body was completely spent, his mind and his heart weren't. 

Therefore, when she fell asleep, he remained awake looking at her, wondering how could have there been a time when he'd thought her less than beautiful.   
_Beautiful_ , he thought when he saw her beneath Winterfell burning walls, Oathkeeper a red lightning in her grip, but he was too focused on saving her life to tell her that. Now he knew she could be even more beautiful.   
Her hand, so strong around the hilt, cupped gently his face, bringing him closer for another kiss, and even if he had just been whining about being old, he was immediately turned on again. And that same hand stroked his cock, tentatively and daringly at the same time, guiding him again inside her - her sword hand, pale, big, calloused, lovely.   
Her eyes had always been amazing, a pool of freshwater, as precious as those sapphires that costed him a hand and bought him a new life, even if he would never have suspected it, back then. Her pupils dilated so much that the blue was just a thin outline, while she matched his pace with her hips, as if she was practicing a move on the training yard, learning quickly. She let out a startled gasp when she came, and she was so beautiful that he thought he might weep, and he followed her over the edge, instead.  
She'd been so beautiful that he wanted more. He wanted her to know, he cursed all those idiots who'd taunted her and called her ugly and unwomanly (he cursed himself more than anyone else). So he tried to wash away his own japes with his lips, kissing and licking her muscular shoulders, the scarred skin of her collarbone, her small, delicate breasts, the curve of her waist, and then her inner thigh, and her cunt.   
Brienne was soft and wet while her hands ran through his hair and then pulled, and she called his name. He sucked harder, fucked her with his tongue and his fingers until her words become just an incoherent moaning.  
Her legs still shaking, she yanked him up, flustered, her mouth open in shock.   
"Your septa never talked you about this, I take." Jaime flashed her a devilish grin, her - their - taste still filling his mouth.  
Brienne shook her head. "Some camp followers did." She admitted sheepishly.   
"What were you supposed to do, according to that crone? Just lie on your back and keep quiet?" Jaime snorted. Gods, he didn't want her to be quiet _at all_ \- and, as soon as her calf healed, he would definitely ask her to pin him to a bed under her outrageously long legs, to hold him down and ride him. So much for the seven-times-damned septa's stuffiness.  
Brienne swallowed, and looked at him as if she could read his thoughts. Maybe she really could, because a flush spread from her cheeks to her neck and further down.  
"I don't remember what I was supposed to do." She answered, her eyes still dark, even if they both were tired and would certainly be sore in the morning. 

They went more slowly, more sweetly, and he needed to tell her, then. "You're beautiful."  
She stiffened, and frowned. "I'm not."  
"You are, Brienne. Beautiful, powerful, graceful." He repeated, punctuating every word with a thrust, and she arched beneath him. "I bet the Warrior and the Maiden argued about you." He whispered on her mouth. "When they had to decide if you were made to fight or to make love. And in the end they settled that you would be marvellous at both."  
Jaime kissed her again, because he didn't want her to see how his chin trembled at the thought of what a gift she was.  
His wife, his friend, his lover. His.

\-----

He basked in the warmth of Brienne's touch while she slept, slackened and peaceful. But then the embers of the bonfire outside the tent burnt out, and in the darkness - their glowing swords carefully sheathed in the scabbards - his ghosts came back to reclaim him.  
One ghost in particular, the ghost of a woman who was still alive. 

If he hadn't known better, Jaime would have said this was his sister taking revenge, but Cersei was no sorceress. If once he'd thought they might feel each other's emotions even when they were apart, now he knew for sure they never did - they barely felt the same when they were together, in hindsight.   
Anyway, he had avoided carefully to think of her for weeks, and now he couldn't shake her off of his mind during his damn wedding night.

Jaime didn't miss her. He didn't regret that he'd left her.  
He just couldn't stop comparing the last hours and what his life had been at his sister's side.   
He'd used to believe he was complete only when he had his cock inside Cersei's cunt, _two halves of a whole_ she kept on saying, a mirror, a perfect correspondence. He had believed her, even though now the thought made him cringe.   
His golden hand weighed on his wrist to remind him constantly of his twin's disdain on the day he came back, maimed and shattered, not looking like her anymore.  
Brienne took it off, caressed the skin on his stump, and he didn't need to fuck her to feel whole, because he already was, he didn't need to resemble her to love her.   
She was giving whereas his sister had been greedy. Tender instead of harsh. Gentle though her body could crush a man twice his size, brave, straightforward.

Cersei sneered inside his head, hissing like a poisonous snake. _I love you_ , the last time they slept together she repeated it a hundred times. Maybe it had been true, when they were younger, at least as long as she'd thought that he was exactly like her, that it was them against the world. Maybe it had been true, but now it felt as if those words were tainted, as tarnished as his former white cloak.   
So he didn't tell them to Brienne, even if he yearned to. The first day after he arrived in Winterfell, he nearly said them. He recalled her scowl, her eyes shining in the cold light of the morning, his own imprudence. _"I love you and I trust you."_ He was about to say. Perhaps she wouldn't have believed him then, perhaps she wouldn't believe him now, anyway.   
But he married her, and he was going to love her and show her how much he loved her, in a way Cersei never allowed him to - never wanted him to, no matter what she said.   
Brienne shifted in her sleep, her hand moved from Jaime's hip to his chest. Slowly, trying not to wake her up, he placed his stump close to her fingers. He felt safe in her arms.   
He was going to love her from this day till the end of his days - and though he'd never been afraid to die, though he knew this kind of happiness was not meant for the likes of him, Jaime prayed the Stranger to give him time, and to let Brienne survive his doom, when it fatally was going to come.

_We came into this world together, we'll leave it together,_ Cersei had been so certain. Only now, Jaime could see the insane selfishness of her words, and he reminded to himself that he could easily have fallen during the battle and she wouldn't have mourned him. Sometimes he forgot that she had ordered The Mountain to kill him, too. 

Cersei's revenge, when it would come, was going to be more vicious than a simple nightmare. That was why Jaime needed to keep his sister as distant as he could from Brienne.   
That was why he stood from the bed, tucked his wife carefully in the blankets, put on his shirt, breeches, boots and fur cloak, in silence, and sneaked out of the tent, shivering in the dawn.  
Perhaps, he thought while he struggled to tighten the cloak with one hand, he needed to keep Cersei distant from himself, too, because he wasn't going to leave Brienne's side anymore, at any cost.

\-----

"A bride should be given fresh fruits, cheese, mulled wine and honey, Ser." Fanny complained, while she put some more bread and two pieces of salted meat in the handkerchief. Winterfell kitchen maids were in charge of their meagre food supplies, and of cooking whatever wolves and men managed to hunt, so Jaime looked for them as soon as the first women came out from the common tents.   
"It's fine, she just needs to eat something. I know she deserved better." Jaime answered with a weary smile, he didn't know whether he was talking only about the food.   
Fanny shook her head and turned to Sarah. The older woman looked at Jaime in a way that reminded him of his aunt Genna.   
"She deserves to be loved, and you love her. That's enough." Sarah stated, picking up a small bundle inside a pocket of her skirt. She put it inside the handkerchief.   
"Ah, the wildling herbs." Jaime snorted, but the woman's face was benevolent - not the judgemental glare that he'd received from Sansa Stark the previous evening, resembling so much the one her late father gave him when he entered the Throne room, many years before.  
"No, Ser. This is just moon tea. The other one is good only if there's a baby on the way, but you don't need that, do you?"  
Jaime widened his eyes. He should feel angry and offended, but Sarah's tone was conspiratorial.  
"Oh, I've seen my fair share of lovers who couldn't wait their wedding night. I _know_ you and the Lady Brienne would want to make things right."  
"Honestly, we all just waited the two of you to kiss already..." Noelle chimed in, and Fanny giggled. "Pod should have let that man go on with the idiotic wager, we'd be rich by now."  
Jaime watched Sarah questioningly, his embarrassment replaced by anger.   
"A _wager_?"   
"The evening has been quite... eventful in the common tents, after you and the Lady retired, Ser." The old woman answered.

Brienne was still asleep when he came back. Jaime woke her up with a kiss, and when her eyes fluttered and opened, his heart fluttered as well.  
For a moment, he wished that the old gods and the new forgot that the two of them existed. A daydream, a fantasy: a little stream of clear water, close to the coast, some fruit trees, a small house with a yard, and children running and playing, children with beautiful blue eyes, the sun of a peaceful spring above them.

"Good morning, wife."  
"I thought you were gone..." She slurred.   
"I must have been an awful lover, last night, if you already want to get rid of me..." He joked, showing her the parcel with the food, and trying not to think that she might really believe he'd left her.  
Brienne rolled her eyes while she stretched.   
"Liar. You know you weren't awful at all."  
"You caught me." Jaime smirked, and kissed her again. "I just wanted to hear it from you." Again, then he had to stop, because they would never have left the tent otherwise.  
He watched her while she got dressed, then they sat on the mattress and he handed her bread and meat.  
"Did you eat?" She asked.  
"Fanny said that you should be given honey, but I've already licked it all from your very sweet cunt..." He answered, eliciting one of her very sweet blushes.  
"Gods, I hope you didn't tell _that_ to Fanny."  
"I might..." Brienne elbowed him in the ribs, he laughed. "I was going to say that I might get punched by Podrick if I said anything disrespectful about you."  
"Podrick?" She asked, chewing.  
"Your squire came to blows with Bronn yesterday evening, because the asshole tried to place a bet about how many times we slept together while we were in Winterfell."  
"Oh for the Warrior's sake, is he alright?" Brienne tried to stand up, worried, but Jaime stopped her.   
"Calm down, Bronn's the one who ended up with a bruised cheekbone."  
" _Podrick punched Bronn_?" In fact, it was quite unbelievable, but according to the women the sellsword had been too intent in gambling to realise that Pod was about to hit him, and didn't expect it at all. _"They didn't sleep together in Winterfell. But I would have smacked you even if they did."_ The boy had said.  
"He's lucky, because _I_ would have killed him. Or at least make him spit a couple of teeth." Jaime picked up his golden hand from the ground, weighing it, and wondering if it would be heavy enough to actually make Bronn spit a couple of teeth. When he turned again towards Brienne, she'd stopped eating, and looked at the slice of bread without seeing it.  
"You shouldn't. You shouldn't slap Bronn with that." She said, pointing to the golden hand.  
"I totally should." Cersei would've asked him to kill the sellsword and his whole family, but he didn't tell that to Brienne, not when she was lost in her thoughts again, a sad look on her face.  
"Back in Randyll Tarly's camp, some of my comrades made a bet." She said, eventually, and her voice sounded so desperate that it made him want to beat those men to a pulp, instead.  
"What happened?"  
"I don't want to speak about it." She answered quickly - too quickly. "I'm sorry." She added with a sigh.  
"It's all right." Jaime caressed her face. "You... You don't need to..." _I have things I can't speak about, too_ , he wanted to say, he hoped she would understand. He didn't say it. She just nodded.  
"They meant to hurt me, to humiliate me. But this is just Bronn being... Bronn. He'd make bets on his own mother."   
"You're too good my lady." He said, but he knew she was right: they all were leaning on the fragile truce that had been settled before the battle, and even a stupid brawl could have unpredictable consequences.   
"I'm not, but I think that this time you'd better leave to Podrick all the knightly deeds." She smiled mentioning her squire, and Jaime was glad to change the subject, and tell her the news.   
"In fact, the maids said that Ser Addam knighted him immediately after..."  
Jaime was certain that Addam did it to spite Bronn more than to praise Pod, but he would have loved to see it. When Addam asked him to kneel, Podrick must have thought he was going to be punished for beating an officer (Fanny described him as scared and proud at the same time). And then he was so happy that his face was almost glittering (and Noelle said it was a pity that he just kept on talking about Lady Meera all the time).  
Brienne's smile widened while he spoke. Jaime knew that he should have knighted _her_ first. But they were married, now: if he bestowed a title on her, it would look like a favouritism, and she would hate it.

"I must find Pod and congratulate him." She said in the end, and stood, slowly, her leg still weak. All in all, he didn't regret too much that he didn't witness the knighting, because in that moment he was making love to her.  
Jaime picked up the swords, and helped her to reach the entrance of the tent. They stood there, side by side, like they did in Riverrun - maybe he should have told her to stay, back then, maybe he should have kissed her, he should have dragged her back inside, shoved her on that table and fucked her until the Blackfish decided to open the castle gates out of boredom.   
But this time she brushed his hand when she took Oathkeeper, and then helped him to close his own swordbelt, and when she looked at him in the eye, he saw joy instead of concern.   
He stopped her before she moved the flap, a sudden thought crossing his mind.  
"Brienne... that bet in the Tarly camp... I don't want to know what it was, but I need to know if I can do anything..."  
"Oh, Jaime." She always could make his name sound like it belonged to someone good. She raised a hand to touch his face, then she hesitated - the uncertainty of someone who'd never been allowed to show her tenderness, he knew it so well. So he put his own hand on hers and guided it on his cheek.   
Joy, and love, so much love that it was useless to keep on thinking he didn't deserve it. She still would love him, so he could only try to be worthier, better.  
She leaned in, kissed him chastely on the corner of his lips. "You already did." She whispered.  
He offered her his arm, and they went out, in the daylight.


End file.
